


One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Pacemakers [17]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Arguing, Broken Gears, Coping, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explanations, Hiding, Mid-Canon, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Pace-Mates, Post-Episode s02e02 Changing Gears, Protectiveness, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 03:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6453781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He needed to move past it, he needed to accept it; Brawn would tell him it probably wouldn’t happen again. Before, he might have believed that.</em>
</p><p>Gears struggles to pick himself back up after his time enslaved to the Decepticons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

**Author's Note:**

> Pace - A company or herd of mules; in my headcanon, a family of Minibots; also a traditional expectation and an honor among Minibots who form one.
> 
> Sequein - the second Minibot to agree to join the proposer's pace; Quanidre - the fourth to agree to join.
> 
> Culumexian - the form of Cybertronian spoken by residents of Culumex, the Minibot city on Cybertron, or the residents themselves.

Why wouldn’t his hands stop shaking?

Frowning deeply, Gears tangled his fingers together and clenched them between his knees. He’d had this problem before; it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. Even so, the tremors seemed to shift from limb to limb, his knees quivering. He ex-vented lightly, swinging his legs from his perch to shake it out. He didn’t know why he was taking the time and effort to stop his trembling, since he was alone, but perhaps he was trying to hide it from himself.

It had taken Gears quite a long time to figure out how to read himself, but even after the recent escapade, the recent…violation…he was able to read it clearly now. He didn’t like what he already knew he was feeling, so he swung his legs more forcefully, banging them against the top of the underground elevator.

The entire ordeal had been over a quintun ago, he reminded himself fiercely. He needed to move past it, he needed to accept it; Brawn would tell him it probably wouldn’t happen again. Before, he might have believed that.

 _Not again. Never again._ He swallowed a few times, shivering more weightily and curling in on himself, gingerly hovering a hand over what had been taken from him. Of course the circuit card had been restored, but the sensation he was remembering as it was yanked out of him was sickening. Everything that had happened afterward made him want to purge.

“Bumblebee’s been lookin’ for you.”

Gears startled, flinging himself back into a proper sitting position and nearly kicking the face of the mech below, sticking out the elevator window. Cliffjumper dodged with a glare which Gears returned in full force.

“Then Bumblebee can come and find me!” Gears snapped self-consciously. His hand hadn’t quite pulled away from his chest; it had only tightened, keen to protect what was _his_. Cliffjumper didn’t mention it, but Gears could discern that he’d noticed by the way he rolled his optics and began scaling the windowsill and then the side of the elevator.

“You get the idea to come up here from Huffer?” Cliffjumper grunted as he settled beside the **sequein**. “When he wants to be depressed, he sits here.”

“Well, I’m not him,” Gears muttered. He would have sent Cliffjumper off with some choice words, but he remembered all too clearly that his pace-mate had hurdled into a hazardous energy field on the mission to rescue him. Out of gratitude, he should let him stay.

Shrugging, Cliffjumper stayed quiet for a minute or two and then nudged Gears’ shoulder. “Bee didn’t mean it, y’know.”

Gears knew what Cliffjumper was talking about in a nanoklik, but he feigned ignorance. “Hmm, ‘didn’t mean it’…Yeah, that’s real clear, ’Jumper.”

“As clear as it’s been that you’re avoidin’ him?” Cliffjumper shot back. “You won’t look him in the optics, Gears, cos Megatron fragged with you and Bee thought it wasn’t that bad!”

Gears hated how his vents hitched at the words; they were probably clogged with the thick volcanic air. “Oh, I think he voted _just_ how he meant to,” he hissed.

“He didn’t understand,” Cliffjumper argued. “But he does now. Brawn _and_ Huffer _and_ Windcharger all took him aside three separate times to explain about the circuit card, that it’s not another hypochondriac thing and that you really do need it. He wants to make up.”

“And is that why you’re here?” Gears spat, clenching his hands so tightly that his central joints squeaked. “To be the go-between?”

“Pff, you really think I’d agree to that?” Cliffjumper scoffed, nudging him again so Gears felt inclined to scoot a few inches away from him. “I’m just making sure you’re not thinking of doing something stupid up here.”

“Oh, like what, Cliff?!” Gears demanded angrily. “The worst thing I can think of already happened! There was a nice vote arranged about it! Did you not notice that? Did you not care? Or did you think I was better off that way? Did you think I was _happier?!_ ” His vocalizer cracked on the word and he fell silent, staring down the chasm in which they dangled and letting the echo of his cry subside. He could sense Cliffjumper’s optics fixed on him, wondering if there would be any more.

After a quiet minute stretched out, Cliffjumper answered in a low voice, “I voted against it. Everyone in our pace but Bee voted against it.” Gears refused to look at him as he leaned closer, trying to regain his attention. “And he gets it now.”

“No, he doesn’t. None of you do, not you or the larger-frames. You—you all may have seen it, but you don’t get it.” Swallowing again, Gears tried to keep his vents steady. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have voted at all; k-keeping me like that wouldn’t have even been a fraggin’ option.”

He had spent centuries thinking it would never be an option again and now all he could think about was watching helplessly as his most precious possession was used for destruction. His spark was screaming that something was wrong, so wrong, but his processor was overridden with the need to oblige, to _obey_. After so long of having free will, the sensation panicked him even further and made him more susceptible. He should have been able to retake what he needed, but his old programming had locked its jaws around him again and he had forgotten how to push back. The others hadn’t known how to push back for him, so they encouraged it.

When he’d heard about the vote, he’d felt the distant sensation of his spark breaking, shock and horror at this blatant betrayal hidden behind a friendly smile. Of course he’d threatened them for it, but it had been a bluff; he wouldn’t have been capable of choosing to hurt them.

He would have obeyed and there would have been absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.

“Okay, then,” Cliffjumper sighed tersely, unaware of Gears' nauseating thought process. “So explain it. It’s a condition that put you in the hot seat out there, so Prime needs to know about it.”

“It’s not a condition, Cliffjumper, it’s who I am!” How he hated to say those words and surprisingly enough, he underestimated how Cliffjumper would hate to hear them.

He wouldn’t have expected how quickly the **quanidre** could leap across the elevator roof and grab him. “Shut up!” he commanded in a growl, rattling him warningly. “It’s _not_ who you are; it’s who you _were_ and if the Bots are gonna keep saying they’re different from the Cons, they’d better keep that straight! You can’t be someone you’re not.”

“I _can_ ,” Gears muttered brokenly, cooling Cliffjumper’s fire in a nanoklik. “I don’t want to, but I can. All of this just proved that Megatron can get to me. It’s all too easy.”

Cliffjumper didn’t release his arm, but his denting grip loosened slightly. Frustrated, he took some time to search for a response and finally came up with moving his hand from Gears’ arm to his shoulder. Gears glanced at it in surprise and Cliffjumper shook him just once more.

“It’ll be a little harder for Megatron to get to you with five other mechs standing in his way,” he swore. “We're Culumexians and we stand by our own. If you can’t count on yourself or that card, you can count on that.”

**Author's Note:**

> The concept of Autobots voting on the outcome for a comrade's _psyche_ and _spark_ really, really bothered me. :/


End file.
